Ceres Metals has been given a public contract for the development on an Autonomous Turret System for base protection purposes. The turrets will activate and shoot at hostiles within range. We will start with a Dual Machine-gun and Twin small laser prototypes. In certain cases the turrets will also house and advanced AMS.

Once development is complete, we will release the system in Training Grounds for pilots to practice with before rolling them out on the front lines.

Ceres Metals has been given a public contract for the development on an Autonomous Turret System for base protection purposes. The turrets will activate and shoot at hostiles within range. We will start with a Dual Machine-gun and Twin small laser prototypes. In certain cases the turrets will also house and advanced AMS.

Once development is complete, we will release the system in Training Grounds for pilots to practice with before rolling them out on the front lines.

With my Spiderslayer(733C Highlander AC20/2 LL/3 SRM6) I did last night 5 times in a single match.

Damn, that's a lot of firepower. How's the heat management?

My D-DC runs the same build. With 13 doubles and the XP unlocks, heat efficiency is about 1.2 as I recall. The HGH should be in the same cooling range.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and digging the new thread title.

I'm a bit better as in my HGH I have 15 DHS and 1 JJ and run 60KPH (280 or 290 XL I think), Endo, and 6 tons AC20 ammo and 2 tons SRM ammo.. JJ allow you to turn faster and get a bead on lights. Up close you don't fire the lasers and just chain fire the SRMs and AC 20. I have cool shot(never used it), adv zoom, sensor range modules. On Cold Maps, its alpha field day. I do run out of SRMs about the 500 damage point.

Note 2 LL and an AC20 require 17 DHS to be heat neutral. With 15, ideally I'd want to fire the LL 2-1-1-1-2-1-1-1-2...while firing the AC20, but I just count down and let the heat go down before firing again.

BTW JJ have the benefit of being an active torso defense in that you jump to avoid the torso hit and take it on the legs which have more armor.

Other tactics I use are stay up high or hide and stop when overheated. I even sometimes stop to cool when being circled (because I adjust the Front/Rear Torso Armor periodically - don't want lights to know where to shoot) my back might have more armor at that point.

It’s patch time! So gather around your monitor and listen while I entertain you with stories of development.

The ‘Mech of the month is the Shadow Hawk. Some of you will already have this ‘Mech but the rest of us now have 55 tons of jump jetting fun to catch up on. Buy it, Make a crazy loadout, master the ‘Mech, and paint It with the NEW Raider pattern.

We also have 2 new modules that are going to rock (technically reduce the rocking of) your world and allow you to climb to new heights!

Get ready because cockpit Items have been re-categorized! Mounted items are standing items and various hanging Items became mounted items. In the end it means that all player cockpit customization will be visible 99% of the time. Won the Heavy VS the World banner? Show it off! Killed a Dev? Show it off! You have nothing to hide now!

We’re also tuning hit boxes! YES, hit boxes! This process will happen to each ‘Mech over the coming months. In Round 1 we chose Atlas, Awesome, Orion, and Spider! Run, Spiders, run! Read on for all the details and even more changes!

- Hitbox geometry aligned better to the render geometry. - Tighter corridor for Center Torso (it's smaller and sides are bigger). - Pelvis adjusted for damage disbursement to left and right leg instead of all center torso. - This BattleMech will still be investigated.

Awesome:

- Head hitbox reduced by 35%. - More of the shoulder regions now apply damage to L/R Side Torsos rather than Center Torso. - Pelvis split to apply damage to Left and Right Leg instead of Center Torso. - Center Torso has been reduced by approximately 15-20%.

Spider:

- Hitbox geometry reduced in complexity and increased in size to encompass components more thoroughly. - Split Pelvis to apply damage to Left and Right Leg instead of Center Torso. - The Left REAR Torso and Right REAR Torso have been increased in size by approximately 10%. - The front Center Torso has been increased in size (around the chest area) by approximately 10%.

Orion:

- Head hitbox reduced by 30%. - Split Pelvis to apply damage to Left and Right Leg instead of Center Torso. - Front Center Torso decreased in size by approximately 10%. Side torsos increased by about 5% on each side.

Rewards for using Counter ECM advantageously

- XP and C-Bills given for successfully countering an ECM enabled enemy 'Mech for 5 seconds. - XP and C-Bills given for countering an ECM 'Mech that then takes locked missile damage from allies.

Bug Fixes

- Fixed an issue where destroying the last jumpjet from a flying Mech causes the SFX and Hud shake to continue permanently. - Fixed an issue where destroying an enemy UAV provides no XP bonus. - Death Knell's arms will now move when you are aiming. - Mech Lab: 'Mech & Cockpit no longer shake & flicker when changing the loadout/modules/cockpit items. - Mech Lab: 'Mech weapon doors no longer clip into the 'Mech when rotating. - Fixed a bug with HSR algorithm where an inaccurate bounding box would sometimes be used resulting in false misses. This was an edge case and is not expected to have a significant effect on hit detection. - Fixed a collision issue with the container ship in Forest Colony and Forest Colony Snow. - Fixed a bug where clients were not being properly informed of override status changes when the 'Mech has a missile lock.

Isn't capping the whole point of an assault map? I mean play to win the match, not to get kills.

Capping should be a strategy, not the only purpose for it. The purpose of shooty stompy robots is to shoot other shooty stompy robots. I get that capping can win you the match, but it should be a last resort or a secondary objective. Too often in PUG games I've played, we won or lost within only 5 minutes simply because of capping.

Isn't capping the whole point of an assault map? I mean play to win the match, not to get kills.

Capping should be a strategy, not the only purpose for it. The purpose of shooty stompy robots is to shoot other shooty stompy robots. I get that capping can win you the match, but it should be a last resort or a secondary objective. Too often in PUG games I've played, we won or lost within only 5 minutes simply because of capping.

You wouldn't have liked me and Roma and Rave and Dei last night then...

Ceres Metals has been given a public contract for the development on an Autonomous Turret System for base protection purposes. The turrets will activate and shoot at hostiles within range. We will start with a Dual Machine-gun and Twin small laser prototypes. In certain cases the turrets will also house and advanced AMS.

Once development is complete, we will release the system in Training Grounds for pilots to practice with before rolling them out on the front lines.

Also will help with current modes, but will have to see how it works first I guess.

Small Lasers and MGs? No one will ever be close enough for it to matter.

(emphasis mine)

My guess is that they are starting out with lightest damage models first to work out the kinks in the targeting AI before branching out to higher level weapons. The amount of QQ would deafening if they started with LRM/AC-20 and people got WTFBBQPWND on the training grounds.

This... intrigues me. How is the ammo? 540 seems a little low, but then again I assume you're taking very specific shots, not just lobbing missiles at all the things?

Pretty much. You act as the scout/spotter for other LRM boats and add your volleys to the mix. Ideally they won't realize they're getting hit from 2 different directions and you can stay in LOS and Tag for teammates. Also, since you're only running LRM10, it's still 54 volleys. I've only run out once or twice, and normally I'll get destroyed by lights/mediums long before I run out.

can someone explain "TL:DR - ECM counter XP/CBill bonuses"? You get ECM bonuses for counter jamming? Cool. Now they only need to add bonuses to being a meatshield for lights, and Wound medals for being receiver of Ballistic Cheese and LRM Sausage as well as being double tapped. Then they need to add an accolade for receiving end on ammo explosion >500 damage, AKA smoking legs.

LCT-1M The LCT-1M was a long range version of the Locust. This variant carried two LRM-5 launchers in place of the Machine Guns at the cost of reduced armor protection.[1][2][17] BV (1.0) = 382,[18] BV (2.0) = 424

I thought of doing that once, but I just felt that (at least looking at it on Smurfy's) it's too slow and doesn't have enough ammo. It's cheaper than an Assault LRM boat, but I think it's not going to be worth it if you can't run way from directed enemy fire.

I liked the HGN-733: TAG, LRM60 + 1980 chances to hit something, tops out at 58.5 km/h (without speed tweak), and has twice the armour as the Kintaro.

The one that I ended up keeping was the HGN-733P: TAG, LRM50 + 1800 chances to hit something, and a single LL as a backup in case lights or mediums start closing in.

In both cases, I haven't added BAP, but you can drop down one LRM 20 for a LRM15 to free up space.

Oh, I like and have the Highlanders, was just looking for a new chassis to play with.

LRM boats don't necessarily have to be fast. 57kph should be fast enough to get you in range.

It's not so much speed to get you in range of a target. Rather, it's just fast enough to pry you away from an ambush. When you only have 280-300 pts of armour, it sheds off very quickly when you suddenly have 2 Cicadas, a Centurion, and possibly a Dragon or Quickdraw in your face. Having 500+ pts of armour means you ought to be able to survive the encounter and run away to friendly mechs.

Last night InfiniteNoodles and I played the 6xML Jenner Tag-Team game wherein we sneak behind the rear-most enemy mech (all of whom almost never kept an eye on their radar), dump twelve medium lasers into their back, core 'em out, and move on to the next one. LOTS of luls were had. Damage numbers were low (relatively speaking), but when you're taking out over half the enemy team with a pair of lights, who cares?

Started patching last night. 3 hours in, I had downloaded... 8mb. Out of 1285. And that was patch 1 of 2. I leave it running all night.

This morning, it was at... 12mb.

Mechwarrior, get your shit together.

Edit: Turns out it lost connection shortly after I went to bed, and was too stupid to retry the connection automatically. I had to push a "Do You Want Me To Stop Being A Dipshit?" button. YES. It's now patching at an acceptable rate.

Started patching last night. 3 hours in, I had downloaded... 8mb. Out of 1285. And that was patch 1 of 2. I leave it running all night.

This morning, it was at... 12mb.

Mechwarrior, get your shit together.

Edit: Turns out it lost connection shortly after I went to bed, and was too stupid to retry the connection automatically. I had to push a "Do You Want Me To Stop Being A Dipshit?" button. YES. It's now patching at an acceptable rate.

Mine took about 10 minutes.

8 games of +700 damage and losing, I get a game with 300 damage (headshot) and we win. I was just playing to get the times 2 XP.

Started patching last night. 3 hours in, I had downloaded... 8mb. Out of 1285. And that was patch 1 of 2. I leave it running all night.

This morning, it was at... 12mb.

Mechwarrior, get your shit together.

Edit: Turns out it lost connection shortly after I went to bed, and was too stupid to retry the connection automatically. I had to push a "Do You Want Me To Stop Being A Dipshit?" button. YES. It's now patching at an acceptable rate.

I bought a Kintaro KTO-18 last night and threw together a cheap light-hunter. KTO-18 The engine came from my Pretty Baby, and the weapons were all spares. It worked fairly well, but it's really lacking in range.

I'm thinking about dropping the engine to an XL300 and swapping the MPL for LL. KTO-18 It looks like it will run slightly hotter, but the extra range would be nice for maps like Alpine and Canyon.

TL;DR – Artemis upgrades will be cheaper. Removing Artemis will require you to repurchase the non-Artemis launchers if you still want to use those weapon systems.

also from Paul's post:

Quote:

e.g. Your BattleMech has an Artemis-SRM4 launcher. If you want to rebuild your BattleMech to have non-Artemis weaponry, you will have to buy a standard SRM4 launcher if you don’t have one in your inventory.

So that means you'll have both Artemis SRM and LRM launchers and normal SRM and LRM launchers in your inventory. Despite giving us more crap to keep in our inventory, I like this idea. It never really made sense to me that Artemis was something that you "enabled" rather that just bought outright.